Getting to Know Maria

It turns out that María Belén Chapur/Shapur, the woman identified by the Argentinian press as Gov. Mark Sanford's mistress, does not work for an agribusiness concern called Bunge y Born, after all. So we really know nothing about her, still.

A South Carolina newspaper had the bright idea to actually call Bunge y Born, which now goes by the name Bunge Limited and is headquartered in White Plains, N.Y., to confirm her employment. A spokesman told the paper that it was all a mix-up: A woman named María Belén Chapur had run a marathon in Buenos Aires along with some friends of hers who work for Bunge; the results, which were posted online, inaccurately identified Chapur as an employee. Google!

Stewart Lindsay, a spokesman for Bunge Limited, said Chapur has never worked for the company. He said the confusion may stem from race results from a 2005 marathon in which Chapur ran alongside Bunge workers with whom she is friends. "But she is not an employee and has never worked there."

It's unclear if this development throws cold water on the the whole story—presumably, Argentinian reporters got hold of the name first and then Googled it and found the marathon results and wrongly concluded that she worked for Bunge. So María Belén Chapur is likely still our woman. But what does it leave us with? Almost nothing. We know that she lives across the street from the zoo in Buenos Aires' Palermo neighborhood, that she speaks Chinese, Portuguese, English, and Spanish, that she has two older sons, is divorced, and that she runs in marathons.

And we still don't know what she looks like. But she's got to come out of that apartment some time, right?